Ashland man charged with repeated child rapes

Saturday

An Ashland man is being held on $50,000 bail after authorities charged him with repeatedly raping and impregnating the daughters of a longtime female acquaintance over a five-year period.

An Ashland man is being held on $50,000 bail after authorities charged him with repeatedly raping and impregnating the daughters of a longtime female acquaintance over a five-year period.

Ricky Jackson, 44, pleaded not guilty at his Middlesex Superior Court arraignment on Thursday to charges he began raping the now 16- and 18-year-old girls in 2002.

The 16-year-old gave birth early this year, and her boyfriend's parents discovered the baby did not look like their son, but rather like Jackson, according to a statement of facts filed by Middlesex Assistant District Attorney Katharine Folger.

A DNA test proved the boyfriend was not the baby's father, and that's when the girl admitted she thought Jackson was the father. At that point, the boy's parents reported the information to Ashland Police, according to Folger's filing.

"(The girl) had confided in their son that the defendant had raped her when she was 11 years old and that the defendant was very jealous of their son's relationship with" the girl, Folger said in the court file.

Police contacted the state Department of Social Services, which investigated. Jackson and the girls' mother denied any abuse, but the DSS convinced the woman to get a restraining order to force Jackson to stay away from her daughter and the baby.

Ashland Police said that on March 23, they went to the woman's home and they found Jackson hiding in the basement, at which point they arrested him.

While being held at the Middlesex Jail, Jackson mailed a letter to the girl, telling her to read and destroy it, the prosecutor said. In the letter, Jackson told the girl to deny ever having sex with him. He said he was worried about a DNA test that would prove he was the father of the girl's infant.

"The defendant directed (the girl) to say she found a cup of his sperm on the counter to be taken to the clinic for a surrogate mother" and that the girl used that to impregnate herself without Jackson knowing, Folger wrote.

He also told the girl to make sure her 18-year-old sister did not talk to police and warned the girl there was nothing she could do about what happened.

"The defendant ended the letter by saying 'If you say this if you go to court thin thay can not do nothing ... you got to do this,' " Folger wrote, directly quoting Jackson's misspellings.

Jackson was released from jail on April 17, and the two girls became "fearful he would harm them," so they went to Framingham Police and disclosed what they described as five years of abuse.

They said Jackson and their mother grew close in May 2002, and they lived in several hotels and apartments in Framingham, Southborough, Northborough and Milford before moving to Ashland.

Beginning in October 2002, they lived at the TravelLodge in Northborough. After the girls' mother went to sleep, he would go to their room at night and rape them, Folger alleged.

The older girl said, she "tried to fight back, but the defendant held her down so she could not move," Folger wrote.

The assaults decreased after the mother, the two girls and Jackson moved to Framingham because the girls' older brother lived with them, Folger wrote.

Jackson twice got the older girl pregnant, when she was 13 and 14 years old, and impregnated the younger girl when she was 12, Folger said.

"The girls' mother took the girls to have abortions each time she learned they were pregnant," the prosecutor said. "She did not know the defendant was the father of her daughters' babies."

The girls told police they never reported the sexual assaults because Jackson had threatened to kill them if they did, Folger said.

Jackson was indicted in early August and arraigned Thursday.

He is charged with two counts each of child rape, violating a restraining order and intimidation of a witness, and one count each of rape and indecent assault and battery on a child younger than 14.

Jackson is due back in court on Sept. 25 for a pretrial conference. He is being held at the Middlesex Jail in Cambridge.

MetroWest Daily News writer Norman Miller can be reached at 508-626-3823 or nmiller@cnc.com.

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